re Dean's speech: Was he unaware of the tv audience, or he knew they were

[milkyway]

there and ignored them?

The only thing wrong with the speech is that Dean did not recognize who his audience was: the millions watching on television, many being exposed to Howard Dean live for the first time. Dean addressed his speech solely to his supporters in Iowa. If there were no media around, it would be hard for most people (especially men) to find a lot of fault with the speech.

His great sin is that he did not bow down to the television gods like all politicians since JFK have done. Perhaps this is one of Dean's greatest threat to the establishment--he does not rely primarily on television to generate his support. (He's too hot for tv! He's unelectable!). He's built his candidacy through the Internet and good old grassroots. No doubt, he has and will use television, but at least until the speech it was less of a factor in his campaign than most.

I've been wondering all week if Dean and his people just really screwed up in not realizing how important the speech was, or if Dean was almost defiantly refusing to have television dictate how he should behave. For those of us who watch CSPAN, Dean wasn't doing anything we hadn't seen many times before, only in Iowa there wasn't any anger, just exuberant determination.

BTW, for those who haven't seen it yet, you can see the speech from the perspective of the audience at http://www.webmastersforamerica.com/Idiom_Studio/video1.htm.
They've gotten close to a hundred thousand hits on their site. The crowd was very loud, and Dean had to shout over it. It seems that on television the mics did not pick up much of the crowd noise, only Dean.

[pinkpops]

1. I figure he would always expect to be on camera but wait a minute

I'm basically a Clark guy, but I don't see what the big deal is. It is all what you (or the press) makes of it. You only have to look at our present Fearless Leader to see that you can act pretty nutty and get away with it so long as the press doesn't smell blood. But once they do they start feeding snippits to support whatever slant they want to put on things.

[Logansquare]

2. I don't think the campaign realized the importance of TV

The internet is a powerful fundraising and communications tool for those already on the boat, but TV is still where the undecided voters go for info. Sadly, the medium is in control of people who do not like our side.

[xray s]

3. Hey

We have a 500 billion dollar deficit, 43 millions Americans without health insurance, 300 thousand people giving up looking for work, Americans getting killed every day in Iraq, a President who promises endless war and more terror attacks on our homeland, crooks running our banks and corporations, a government that has been transformed into an oligarchy run by oil and defense industry executives, a mass media dominated by the same oligarchs that is bent on keeping us all "fat, drunk and stupid".

If that doesn't make you want to get up and

SCREAM

you don't have a heartbeat.

[Metrix]

4. He knew they were there

He was deliberately denying the fact of his third-place finish. A little FU to the caucus-goers. He went so over the top that he succeeded. Otherwise all the media would have had to analyze the past week are the substantive reasons for his loss in Iowa, a state he really had to win.

[AmandaRuth]

5. i think i saw in a post here

that said the scream was picked out and artificially enhanced and the crowd noise was removed to make it sound "scarier". I think that if that is true, than that is the story that needs getting out, the goring of dean.

Just more marginalization by the reThug media. Or course, in the Seatte market they played it over and over, like it had some significance at all to the election.

[pretzel4gore]

6. i thought the 'rebel' yell was an honoured

american behavior characteristic? the same media that conned US into iraq war now says the yell is sign of mental deformity!
well well well...

[Lobo_13]

7. It's hard to believe

that it was deliberate. I believe him when he says he was speaking to the thousands of people who had come from all over the country to help him out in IA.

Even though the campaign has taken alot of gambles, I don't think they have the balls to do this kind of thing deliberately.

On the up-side, this whole week should have been about Kerry/Edwards. But it was still about Dean. I can imagine how much the camera hungry Senator from Mass was eat up inside about that. It also got alot of people to take a second look at Dean. And many of them think he's just the bee's knees.

I suppose his biggest sin was that he wasn't sufficiently defeated for the mediawhore's tastes.

[SheilaT]

8. Context is everything.

He was speaking to about a thousand of the several thousand volunteers and campaign workers in Iowa and they were all pumped up, despite the poor showing in the caucuses.

If you've only heard the part where he says he's going on to various states and then yells, you're missing a lot. You need to hear the crowd chanting, "Dean, Dean, Dean" and their enthusiastic welcome of him. I know some people who were there and they said the crowd noise was so great that thirty feet away from him, despite the sound system, they couldn't hear him.

It was a post-campaign rally, NOT a speech intended for the general public.

I was in Iowa last weekend for a couple of days, and I can tell you that the energy level among the volunteers and campaign staff was nothing short of amazing. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.